HB Deployment

Our surge deployment is now on its last day (Wednesday) and here in Central Hawkes Bay, the council is preparing for recovery.   Myself and my surge colleagues will go back to our day jobs, having been fully immersed in the EOC.  Like previous deployments, the mind-shift for deployment has been a strange and surreal thing.  It feels like we have been fully immersed in the fabric of Central Hawkes Bay forever, that living out of a pack in a motel is entirely normal, and that the journey to get here was something I saw on TV that happened to someone else. There is also a small feeling of guilt about going back to BAU and leaving the people here at Central Hawkes Bay, and the wider Hawkes Bay region, with the task of rebuilding their infrastructure and in some cases, rebuilding their lives.  

The disparity between the status of the emergency response across the wider Hawkes Bay was made apparent at our Group (region-wide) intelligence briefings this week.  1100mm of rain in 24 hs up the top of Esk Valley will do that.  The NZDF still has a significant presence in the wider Hawkes Bay at both the coordination centre and on the ground,    

As of today, day 27 after Gabrielle hit:

• Regionally, Hawkes Bay is far from recovery. There were a few communities up the coast who are only now making contact with the response effort, now 27 days since the event, due to their isolation.
• SH2 remains compromised north of Napier near Devils Elbow, which is proving a major issue including for stock movement.
• 4 bailey bridges are confirmed for the Hastings district, with the ETA being to have these open in 4-6 weeks.  A further 5 bailey bridges for Hastings district and Wairoa are under assessment
• USAR teams remain deployed in Hawkes Bay, and have been helping to control access at some of the river crossing points 
• supply drops to remote communities are still ongoing (30 isolated / inaccessible communities remain at day 27)
• the scale of Gabrielle was also reiterated with reports of one stopbank, designed for 1 in 500yr event (including a 1 metre freeboard), being overtopped - along with Gabrielle being 2m higher than the 1938 flood in Esk Valley, and Hastings ground moisture at the highest ever soil moisture recording (NIWA Gabrielle summary)

Pakowhai Hastings, before and after

Esk Valley

Hastings District

Wairoa silt, river path in flood

The Central Hawkes Bay staff - now colleagues - have been fantastic hosts, making us feel warmly welcome and part of their community.  Like all small Councils, CHB punch above their weight, multi-task across roles, and make stuff happen, with it being hard to distinguish between serving the community and being part of the community.     

Some takeaway musings as I complete this post:

• the massive scale of Gabrielle and the immediate threat to life response across the whole region - some of the rescue / survival stories have been quite astounding
• the extent of infrastructure damage across the region 
• building damage which was complete and total destruction in some confined areas, minor in other areas and "nothing to see here" for many parts of the region  
• the different pace of response to recovery across the region, which reflects the scale and nature of damage being different in different areas, and the response-ability of agencies  
• the hours put in during the initial response, and after, by both response personnel and infrastructure rebuild personnel and contractors across telecoms, broadband, power, roading and river engineering crews
• the inter-agency support effort, involving FENZ, Police, NZDF, Australian DF, NEMA, helicopter / aircraft operators, infrastructure agencies, contractors, volunteers, and councils 
• finally, the NZ CDEM system and capability that has been developed and is being continuously improved, to coordinate this response, including the ability for an initial rapid response then surge teams to boost capacity, with each event preparing us better for the next one 

Thanks to the CHB district council for hosting us, my surge colleagues for their camaraderie, my colleagues at Waipa District Council for picking up BAU, and management at Waipa DC and my family for supporting me in helping out.  

Waipukurau where we have been staying. 

Central Hawkes Bay summed up  

The Leopard - possible home to Big Bertha2.  750ml bottles of beer still sold over the counter, orange outerware or check shirts mandatory, and Thai salad is highly recommended.

The Waipawa piggery breakout temporary repairs nearly complete, now open to light traffic. Flood, after flood and after repair.

Waipawa piggery, bypass over private land, un-light traffic pictured before the repair was opened.  Until then the road remained officially closed but the gravel bypass is in good repair and the longer detour has a cost on time and dollars.  Being over private land the council cannot enforce the road closure and the owner was happy with traffic as long as the route was marked.  Win-win.

These ones are on the long term fix list...

Note the bridge below is actually intact. This photo is downstream of the Waipawa River breakout and the river blasted through the Eastern bridge approach under its new alignment and historic bed.

We couldn't figure out how the post below ended up under the seal... 

HB Deployment

Luckily the forecast rain and thunderstorms didn't eventuate on Saturday.

The weekend was very quiet which allowed us to do some document tidy up. Having the surge team and alternate controller in on the weekend, monitoring and "response ready", also meant that the local staff could have a well-deserved break.   Not exactly riveting work, but document management is important for future checks on spend as well as lessons learned and continuous improvement for "the next one".   Our southern surge counterparts have also delightfully informed us of AF8 being their "next one", while the north island team mentioned a small magma dome under a certain lake in the central North Island - helpfully without any competitive element.  We all agreed it is what it is, and while being prepared is always wise, it is important to live each day for what it is.    

One example of inter-council collaboration over the weekend related to a rural detention dam.  Designed to temporarily hold overflow water, regional council staff were concerned about its integrity as it had been full for several days and was draining very slowly.  As a regional council asset, they had arranged a geotech investigation and assessed the consequences of any failure as low, given it was mostly farmland with some houses further down out of harm's way.  In this case there was no action for our EOC as the regional council had arranged for pumping and precautionary communications to the occupants downstream, but it was good to know we have capacity if we needed to provide any support.  Another example was CHB supporting with disposal sites for waste material from Hastings District, mainly fencing material and silt.

While Central Hawkes Bay has largely shifted into recovery, other parts of Hawkes Bay are still very much operating in emergency response.  Regional and other EOC sitreps (situation reports) show several small communities are still cut off and needing helicopter re-supply and welfare checks, along with schools remaining closed, major clean-ups underway, displaced people still unable to return to their homes and at least one further critical bridge in Wairoa being assessed as "failure, imminent".  

An end of weekend afternoon run to download the cameras revealed that the cameras and bollards were still in place.  The roading crew will be happy.

In the spirit of all small communities, there were a number of events scheduled to make the best of the weekend fine weather and celebrate a coming together after shared trauma.  This is an important and common part of community healing and return to a new normal, usually coordinated and run by the very communities that have been affected.    

Porangahau community-run long lunch images below, with community kai being provided throughout the week. We were quite pleased we didn't have to monitor or report any incidents at the place starting with T.

Waipukurau wastewater treatment plant.  Home of Big Bertha.

Multi use stopbank protection, cycleway, and part time dog agility park/ute park  - Tukituki river below Waipukurau

The river flowed at the base of the small shrubs at the base of the stopbank, below

Fresh branch break from water flow - 2m above dry ground level, 5 plus metres above the river level...for the full width, stopbank to stopbank

Tukituki on a nice day, flows still higher than normal

Waipawa breakout Aerial Imagry - before

....and after, with the new lake

HB deployment

The roading contractors' teams are smashing out some of the priority upgrades.  While there are major repairs still to do, they impressed us with their temporary repair for light vehicles to a pretty munted bridge, before and 3 days after photos below.  

Today involved a community reassurance visit with the controller and support to a community who have been active on social media around their anxiety.  They are impacted by some road closures, and while they do have access, remain anxious about safety, rather than road integrity.  We have received reports that the school bus company is not running on one of the roads even though this is open and not compromised.  The key messages to the community will be that we are going as fast as we can and need to actually prioritise other communities who have more pressing access needs.  Safety is relative, and it really comes down to the decision of the bus company and individuals if they prefer not to use roads that are functionally safe. 

Meanwhile, back at base, we had an update that a rural community of around 30 people no longer had access.  They were cut off until the farmer provided 4WD access through a farm track.  This has now become unsafe and unavailable, meaning the community is again isolated from road access.  The bridge (below) is at least 5 days from having a temporary 4WD bypass established. So it is a case of monitoring both their needs and progress on the bypass.

Overall, today was about community connections and some positive roading wins, albeit temporary and with weight or speed restrictions.  Hopefully, Saturday afternoon's rain which is forecast (below) won't set us back...  

 

Early days....Old piggery below the Waipawa breakout  

HB Deployment

 After a day off to catch up on washing, and make a minor contribution to the economy of Norsewood, as expected on my return the intel and ops functions were merged for efficiency and to help with the CHB staff return to their BAU.   At the controller’s insistency, his invitation for me to be duty controller yesterday morning was overridden by the rostered break.   

Staff welfare is something that is given high priority.  COVID awareness is maintained, each of the surge staff receives daily check-in calls from NEMA on welfare, and we all risk going back a couple of kilos heavier.

Roading, Waipawa water treatment, welfare and comms remain the focus.  Due to heavy traffic limits on the Patangata Bridge, we procured and installed a motion capture camera, in addition to installing chicanes to limit heavy traffic.  We are taking bets on whether the camera will still be there when we go to download the data. 

Another of the roads was looking like needing cameras.  One of the main logging back roads between Central Hawkes Bay and Tararua district has had a recent slip, after the cyclone event.  This reinforces that slips can still occur after the actual event, as the land finds its new equilibrium.  An underslip has closed this road which has necessitated an extensive detour.  While the road is looking able to be opened to light vehicles, it remains unsuitable for logging trucks.  This has led to some “escalated driver responses” and a need for the farmers to physically park a digger and tractor on either side of the slip. These were replaced with concrete bollards with gaps measured to accommodate a Ford Ranger ute.  With Central Hawkes Bay being the ute capital of NZ, the road crew considered this a suitable measurement. It's not so much that "every second vehicle is a ute", but more that every 9th one isn't. 

Two more cameras were procured from Hastings as our last purchase (of 1) depleted the local supply, and a request went out to NZDF for checkpoint personnel to help dissuade the logging trucks.  This was not considered a priority so cameras were our next option.  These restrictions are frustrating and incur real inconvenience and costs for trucking operators.  The reality is that these measures are needed for reasons of health and safety, but also to avoid extended time for repair if the road is further compromised by heavy traffic.  This has been something of a challenge, with (some) drivers seeing the road as looking Ok on the surface without an appreciation of structural integrity. For a hard core few there is also an anti-authority sentiment.  This could be resolved with Dawinian natural selection if a truck did happen to fall off a road, but the fact is that this would then require an avoidable emergency response, possible hospital costs and time or inconvenience to an undertaker, and further delays to all road users on having a serviceable road.  Those living local to these areas have been very cooperative and happy to assist as they appreciate the need to maintain viable roading connections. 

After an hour’s discussion amongst several people involving 4 EOC functions and one credit card, cameras were duly purchased from Hastings and we made an after-shift run to the district boundary to install them, with python cable locks, in as inconspicuous locations as we could, which still afforded line of site to the concrete bollards.  The road crew were genuinely concerned that a persistent logging driver would hook their snig chain around the bollards to enable passage and were keen to catch them in the act.  We were pleased to find our Mitsubishi Titon fitted comfortably between the Ranger-wide bollards with many millimetres to spare. Hopefully the cameras will be there in the weekend when we go to download the photos...

Below: Rural road slip necessitating physical barriers and camera monitoring to deter keen logging truckers (location unspecified to avoid compromising the camera placement).  

Patangata Rd bidge chicane bollards in action 

Tukituki rail bridge showing some debris

EOC - standard setup, standard location (commandeering the local council chambers)

Old pig farm just below the Waipawa river breakout, showing the extent of gravel wash.